London Bridge, Updated

The idea of habitable or living bridges keeps popping up in proposals, and the idea has a lot of merit in our desire to provide density, connectivity and ultimately, increased livability of urban areas. Another recent proposal uses the old/new idea in London to build a bridge including retail and residential uses and is being championed by Mayor Boris Johnson. As Treehugger mentions: “The Antoine Grumbach design has a pair of 35 storey towers holding up the bridge, which is lined with cafes, bars and shops, along with trees, a greenhouse and a “topiary café”.”

There is some historical precedent mentioned (particularly in reference to a popular nursery rhyme), particularly in the reference to the old London bridge: “London Bridge used to be a hopping place, lined with so many houses and shops that it took an hour to get across. So 178 years ago it was knocked down and replaced with a more sedate bridge, which was sold to an Arizona property developer who thought he was buying the iconic Tower Bridge.”

As Jonathan Glancey mentions in the Guardian, alongside this image (above) of historic London Bridge, “…inhabited bridges are alluring but impractical.” – mentioning traffic issues, as well as the aesthetic not fitting into the idea of our modern world – using two major precedents as examples. “As for surviving “inhabited” bridges, well, “tacky” is a polite word to describe the experience of crossing them. Florence’s Ponte Vecchio and Venice’s Rialto Bridge are exquisite structures, yet both are a kitsch nightmare today. The one thing both fail to do is to get people and goods across rivers in anything like a useful or enjoyable manner.”

Although the warnings may be viable, there is something intriguing about the idea of incorporating a variety of non-motorized uses into our spans. I sat in for studio crits for a University of Oregon architecture class taught by local architect Suzanne Zuniga that envisioned a range of opportunities from restaurants to swimming pools and skate parks linking east to west. Also, I posted about a speculative habitable bridge envisioned by local firm Path Architecture featuring similar retail environments. There is also the new Willamette River span – that while not incorporating commercial activity – is exclusive to light rail, bike and pedestrian crossing with a form that will become the newest addition to bridge city. Lots of potential, even without the shops.